Clubcommission
Text: Thomas Vorreyer
Live Stream at Watergate (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis that has affected almost every country, every aspect of our lives, and every sector of the economy. Club culture, too, was brought to its knees at a stroke. However, in Berlin a new project has given hope to clubs, performers, and music fans, and has moved culture and partying online. This is its story.
The story of an experiment that has become a lifeline for the badly battered club scene; a project that has been a role model for the world. It is the story of United We Stream—told from the perspectives of four different people representing thousands of others who are involved around the world.
Over 700 more events, streamed from over 450 locations and featuring more than 2200 performers, were due to follow by the end of the year and be watched and danced along to at home by over 40 million people.
United We Stream: The solidary response to COVID-19 and the worldwide shutdown of club culture. (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
"Showing the Responsible Side of Club Culture"
The news reached the club scene on a Friday, March 13: Berlin was to go into coronavirus lockdown. The world-famous club scene had to shut up shop. What next? "We needed a strategy, we needed visibility and financial support," recalls Katharin Ahrend. She has been in charge of the Awareness & Diversity project at the Clubcommission in Berlin for the last year.
The Clubcommission—an interest group for clubs and party organizers—had a short meeting that same day with the Reclaim Club Culture network and around 50 other players involved in the club scene. The idea for a rescue plan came up quite quickly: live streaming of DJ sets from now empty clubs, combined with a fundraising campaign for the clubs. United We Stream was born.
The following Monday, the TV channel ARTE Concert agreed to carry the live broadcasts. Two days later, Berlin-based DJ Jamiie appeared before Internet users beneath the LED pixel ceiling at the Watergate. During the first few months, Katharin attended every streaming event, making sure that hygiene standards were complied with. "We wanted to show the responsible side of club culture," she says. "Everyone who took part supported that and behaved responsibly." Politicians and the tabloid press often complain about alleged coronavirus parties, but United We Stream is entirely socially distanced. The rules—keep your distance, wash your hands, and wear a mask—flash up between sets.
Back at the desk, Katharin was a member of a working group that developed an Awareness Manifesto for United We Stream. Instead of relying mainly on celebrity white male DJs, the streamed events should reflect the full diversity of Berlin. On the basis of these criteria, a jury would then allocate the donations so that the participating clubs could at least go some way towards covering their monthly rent, despite standing empty.
LCavaliero and SchwuZ: "The Community Needs Us Now"
One of the clubs that became a part of United We Stream is SchwuZ. Normally, this queer institution on the Berlin club scene books 250 performers a month. "SchwuZ is a kind of protected space," says the club's Artistic Director, LCavaliero Mann. Queer people can meet here and relax. But the closure of the club due to coronavirus left a void and LCavaliero soon noticed that: "The community needs us now."
On March 29, the twelfth United We Stream evening so far was streamed from SchwuZ. DJs like Marsmaedchen, Mermaid Mudi, and Caramel Mafia picked up the sanitized controllers in turn and switched the tracks between old-school disco, Middle Eastern beats, and hip-hop. Drag queen Bambi Mercury played her set dressed in a corset and Sailor Moon football armor.
LCavaliero wanted to reflect the diversity of the club with this line-up. "Club culture means more than just electronic music," he says. "And we don't just have white cis hetero men behind the decks." Not in any normal year, and not in the coronavirus year, 2020.
Alte Münze x Feel Festival Stream (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
Consequently, the club received top marks for commitment from the United We Stream jury. At the beginning of May, it decided how to allocate the first 300,000 euros that had been received in donations. Vital resources for SchwuZ, which had in fact already raised several thousand euros with its own fundraising campaigns, and had been able to get a loan, but still had to wait until the autumn for the promised state aid. "Without the support of the community," says LCavaliero, "we would most probably have had to file for bankruptcy."
DJ Nene H.: "Partly Saved"
Nene H. has played three times for United We Stream; once solo, and twice B2B with colleagues. In recent years, this DJ and producer has built up a reputation as an up-and-coming techno act, appearing at ://about blank, Herrensauna, and Berghain. But for her, too, 2020 brought a complete break.
It was months before she accepted that the clubs weren't going to reopen any time soon, says Nene today. Projects like United We Stream "partly saved" her and other performers. They enabled her to play when everything else had ground to a halt.
She presented her first United We Stream set at the Arena Club in early May. Actually, she was supposed to have been selecting the tracks for a crowd of perspiring dancers at Michael Müller and Henning Baer's Grounded Theory night. Instead, Nene stood alone at the decks, only a handful of people in the room with her.
She hadn't worked as a DJ for a long time and the cameras made her a little uncomfortable. "We are club performers; we want to create a special moment with the people who are there," she says. "But soon you're standing there and you're more aware of the music than the cameras." When, at the end of her set, Nene played Gucci Mane in the Cadency remix of Ellen Allien's Free Society, she was grinning from ear to ear.
Live streaming at Griessmuehle (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
But United We Stream doesn't only present carefully curated DJ and live sets. A live discussion stream, United We Talk, was soon added to the program, and later a whole festival was organized. Someone had the idea of doing an audiovisual tour of a Museum of Art in Berlin and there was a new interpretation of Franz Schubert's Swan Song.
Live Stream at Watergate (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
In the midst of their toughest time ever, clubs were able to underline what they have been fighting for politically for years: the fact that they are just as much cultural institutions as theaters and opera houses. And that they therefore deserve to be protected in just the same way from gentrification and the interests of investors, among other things. It was partly because this fight has been going on for so long that it was possible for United We Stream to be organized so fast and on such a wide scale in spring 2020.
"The First Time All the Asian Countries Have Worked Together"
The first live streamed events from Manchester and Vienna were broadcast in early April. United We Stream was going global. Since then, there have been broadcasts from Bogotá, Moscow, and Detroit, and also from Asia.
Phuong Le set up her own booking agency in Singapore two years ago. Normally she travels thousands of miles a year all across Asia. But in January, the first cancellations from China started coming in and soon Phuong had nothing to do.
When United We Stream started, she wrote to a friend in the Clubcommission: "Hey, I'm bored." It wasn't long before Phuong was managing the program for the whole continent. There's no state aid for clubs here, and protesting wouldn't have done any good, says Phuong. "It seemed to me that UWS was the only way to help people and music clubs."
The first two live streams from Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City began at the end of May. By October they had been followed by Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Ulaanbaatar, Shanghai, and other cities. "It was the first time that all the Asian countries had worked together," says Phuong. "We were all in the same boat."
Hardly any donations are received, because the club scene is still stigmatized in many countries, but instead Phuong is achieving something else. "With United We Stream, we have been able to introduce local talent and clubs to a global audience." Anyone who wants to go out clubbing in Vietnam in the future can get a good overview of what's available locally from the live streams. Vietnamese state TV has also reported on United We Stream, and several tourist centers have signed up. So Phuong is hoping that the success of United We Stream will now persuade Asian countries and cities to support their clubs.
Live Stream at Watergate (2020) by Jascha Müller-GuthofClubcommission
United We Stream: "Acting Together and Being Innovative, Instead of Just Being Victims"
Back in Berlin, LCavaliero from SchwuZ believes that United We Stream has made them "part of a collective global experience." And Nene H. emphasizes the so far non-commercial nature of the project which, as a side benefit, has managed to pass on donations for purposes such as emergency bail-outs: "The attitude has always been: by people for people," says the DJ.
"March was cold, the streets were empty, no-one knew what they could and couldn't do," says Katharin from the Clubcommission, thinking back to the early days. And even though there is still no prospect of Europe's music clubs reopening, United We Stream could well have changed the scene for ever.
"We have shown that you can reach a huge audience by presenting very diverse events," says Katharin. "By making a collective effort and working in solidarity, we have gained global visibility for club culture. We're not just victims, we can act together and be innovative." Streaming will continue until the clubs are allowed to open again.
